You'll love it if:
- You are a fan of Lego games
- You're looking for a family friendly co-op adventure
- You appreciate the art that is recreating cool stuff with bricks
Not for you if:
- You dislike light hearted games
- You'll die if you hear a bad joke
- You never appreciated a good Lego set
The latest Lego game surprisingly takes place in the world of Horizon, more specifically as a spin-off of Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy makes her first appearance on the Nintendo Switch on November 14th, while the game also releases on PS5 and Windows.
Guerilla Games, which also developed the main Horizon titles, has developed Lego Horizon Adventures in collaboration with Studio Gobo. They have done a masterful job recreating the recognizable post-apocalyptic world and machines in Lego, but that typical Lego wit doesn’t reach its full potential in the setting of Horizon.
TL;DR
Sony made an interesting choice by adapting the Horizon franchise for a Lego game. The machines and overall post-apocalyptic world look phenomenal in bricks. The lighter version of Aloy’s story, on the other hand, doesn’t quite fit the typical Lego humor we’re used to seeing. Yet Lego Horizon Adventures offers a great gaming experience with creative customization options and explosive combat.
If you can look past the corny jokes, there is a really good adventure game here, especially in co-op.
Lego Horizon Adventures Review: Story
The Horizon games are set in a unique world: the post-apocalyptic United States in the 31st century. Humans are back to living in more primitive ways, but there are still traces of technology. Most notably, large machines, usually resembling animals, roam the Earth.
Humans peacefully coexist with them, but they do hunt them from time to time to scavenge parts. The protagonist, Aloy, is an outcast from the tribe Nora. She’s been raised by another outcast named Rost. As she grows up, she wants to learn more about her origins.
Lego Dawn
Lego Horizon Adventures is inspired by the events in Horizon Zero Dawn, but the story is a lot more light-hearted. That’s, of course, an attempt to target a younger audience since Lego games are marketed as family-friendly. On top of that, I get the feeling they are trying to reach an entirely new audience too.
Horizon does not have the same fanbase as some other Lego titles like Star Wars or Batman. While especially the animal-like machines in Horizon are a great fit for Lego sets, the world and characters in general aren’t as appealing to people unfamiliar with the original games.
Praise the Sun
The story in Lego Horizon Adventures is, of course, centered around Aloy, who wants to learn where she came from and who her mother is. When a group of cultists attack the village, Rost sacrifices himself for her. That’s how he becomes the narrator in this story.
The cultists are led by Helis, who loves sunbathing more than anything. He loves it so much he is teaming up with an ancient evil that wants to destroy the world. To achieve this the machines have been corrupted to become more aggressive towards humans. Aloy sets out on missions to not only try and stop the cultists but also save the world.
Aloy discovers what they call Cauldrons. These are areas inside the mountains full of technology, a stark contrast with her primitive world and way of life. She finds a hologram of scientist Elisabet from the Old World, telling her about the end of the world that’s about to take place again. She has created a weapon that can destroy the threat, but she is too late to use it herself.
Now it’s up to Aloy to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The weapon consists of three parts, like metal flowers, that are scattered around the world. Together with three friends (allowing co-op play up to 4 players), Aloy sets out to learn more about who she is and how to save the world.
Lego Horizon Adventures Review: Gameplay
The gameplay in Lego Horizon Adventures is genuinely fun and engaging. You set out on adventures in different parts of the world but always come back to the village Mother’s Heart. This offers some flexibility in what you want to do in Lego Horizon Adventures, but it’s also not as overwhelming as a fully open-world game sometimes can be. It also lends itself perfectly to shorter gaming sessions, with an opportunity to rotate playable characters.
Mother’s Heart
The Nora tribe’s village serves as your home base. After every adventure, you’ll come back here and get an opportunity to visit a literal tree to upgrade your skills. Though you can hardly call it a skill tree. The individual playable characters will automatically level up and gain new skills as you play with them, no Excel sheets required to craft the perfect build.
In the tree you can also buy upgrades with studs (the currency in Lego games). Some examples are XP boosts, increased duration of status effects, etc. You’ll unlock more upgrades as you progress through the main story. There’s also the Community board which offers unique challenges in exchange for more golden bricks or unlocks.
Ninjas, Astronauts, and Chickens
You earn 1 golden brick at the end of every adventure. Golden bricks track your progress. Certain parts of the village are locked off until you’ve progressed the story, and the different empty plots require a certain amount of golden bricks to add a building. You can customize the buildings by changing the roof or colours, for example.
More customization options will become available as you keep playing. Lego Horizon Adventures also lets you play dress-up, simply visit the tailor in the village and put on your new costume. Most of the customization options require studs to use them, so there’s an incentive to gather as many as possible while you’re adventuring or to keep playing after you’ve finished the story.
Around the village, you’ll also find smaller customizable plots with increasingly fun options. You can decorate the village to your heart’s content. While it’s a simple feature, I had a ton of fun seeing all the different options they decided to add to Lego Horizon Adventures.
Most of them make no sense at all. As if you’d thrown all your Horizon, Ninjago, Lego City and Amusement sets into one big box and started building a city out of this heap of bricks. It’s this kind of nonsense that I absolutely love about Lego games.
Adventures
The story is relatively simple and not too long. Lego Horizon Adventures breaks it down into three major areas, each with its own biome and objectives to complete. Lego Horizon Adventures also offers a variety of accessibility options and difficulty levels, so you can switch it up depending on the current challenge. After completing every hunt on the hunting grounds, you unlock free mode and can explore the different areas again.
Expeditions
Every expedition has a set objective: find an object, destroy a thing, etc. You traverse the lands according to a set trajectory, but there is some room for exploration off the beaten path. Following silver studs will lead you towards secrets like chests, but you’ll eventually need to go back to where you came from to continue forward to your objective.
The world looks truly phenomenal, especially on PS5. I found myself marveling at how stunningly they recreated the world from Horizon in Lego. During Cauldron expeditions you’ll also encounter several environmental puzzles, which were never very difficult to solve. Most typically, an expedition will end with a fierce battle against several machines or even a mini-boss.
Hunting Grounds
Once you’ve completed all the expeditions in one region, you unlock the Hunting Grounds in that area. Similar to the expeditions, you’ll explore the world of Cauldrons and will need to defeat a fierce machine at the end. The reward here is a red brick, not golden.
The combat in Lego Horizon Adventures is simply good. Every playable character has their own weapon (bow, spear, hammer, or bomb), offering a good variety. You’re not stuck to ranged attacks with Aloy if that’s not your jam. You’ll also find power-ups that come in handy during battles, for example, a brick separator item to smash enemies with or fire arrows.
The battle arenas will often have elemental barrels for you to throw at enemies or areas where you can shoot arrows and thus apply the relevant status effect. The many different enemy types offer quite the challenge to boot since they each have their own attack patterns and weak points.
Lego Horizon Adventures Review: Conclusion
I did not expect the next Lego game to take place in the world of Horizon. The franchise seemed like a weird choice to me since it doesn’t naturally speak to a younger audience or doesn’t have backing in books or movies. I also failed to see how they could apply the Lego success formula to a franchise like Horizon. After all, nothing about the story, the world, the machines, or the characters screams “funny” to me.
Sony has just released a remaster of Horizon Zero Dawn in October for PS5 and Windows, which isn’t coincidental. While I’m still skeptical about why Sony wanted to make a Lego game out of Horizon specifically, I do believe Lego Horizon Adventures is honestly a really good game. The world and the machines are SO cool in Lego; it’s ridiculous. This is the first time a Lego game has made me want to get my hands on some actual Lego bricks. Not only the world-building but also the customization elements of the Homebase are truly inspiring and make me want to get creative with it too.
The story was nothing special, however, and most of the jokes fell flat to me. I’ve had the most laughs in the village, trying out silly costumes and messing with the other villagers. The incredible combat, however, balances out the issues with the story for me. I’ve finished most of Lego Horizon Adventures and plan to go back to it to earn all the golden bricks and complete the community requests. I recommend Lego Horizon Adventures to any fan of Lego or adventure games.
Special thanks to PlayStation Greece for a chance to review this game.
